Representative from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood being hosted by UCI Academic Divisions

Hat Tip: An alert member of the UCI Faculty Family

The UCI History Department, MESSI, and two UCI research centers are bringing to campus a representative from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Click here for a selection of quotations from the leadership of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood showing their support for violence.

Original Link from UCI School of Social Sciences

Title:	Religion and Democracy in the Middle East
Office:	International Studies
Event Date:	10/8/2008 - 10/8/2008
Details:	The Department of History, Middle East Studies Student Initiative (MESSI), Center for Research on International and Global Studies (RIGS), and Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies (CGPACS) present: "Religion and Democracy in the Middle East: A New Generation of the Muslim Brotherhood Takes the Stage" with Ibrahim El Houdaiby, leading young member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Humanities Instructional Building, Room 135 El Houdaiby will discuss the history and current positions of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the situation of democracy in Egypt today, the rise of a new generation of secular and religious cyber-activists, the challenges and successes they've encountered in struggling for democracy, and the role of U.S. policy in furthering or stifling democracy in the Middle East. Ibrahim El Houdaiby is a leader of the emerging generation of political and social activists associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest religiously-founded group of its kind in the Middle East. He is a board member of ikhwanweb.com, the Muslim Brotherhood's Official English Website. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a B.A. in political economy, and is currently working towards an MA in Islamic Studies at the High Institute of Islamic Studies in Cairo. He is a freelance columnist and researcher, with published articles and research papers in Arabic and English periodicals and journals. His Arabic works were published on IslamOnline.net, IkhwanOnline.com, Weghaat Nazar Monthly, Contemporary Muslim Quarterly, Al Badeel Newspaper and Al Dostoor Newspaper. His English works were published in th Guardian, Daily News Egypt, Jewish Daily Forward, World Politics Review, CommonGroundNews.org, Conflics Forum and CEPS. This event is free and open to the public. For further information, please contact Mark LeVine, 949.824.8304.

MSU quietly posts announcement for their upcoming 2008 Anti-Zionism Week

Hat Tip: Reut R Cohen

Strangely, the MSU isn't touting their events too highly on their website. It's a tiny little link in the upper left hand corner of their website. Are they afraid of something?

Click on each thumbnail below to see the full-size version:

Front

Back

Here's the text on the back:

May 14th, 2008 marks 60 years since the beginning of the Palestinian tragedy, commonly referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba (Catastrophe). 60 years of dispossession, statelessness, and ethnic cleansing have created the largest group of refugees in the world; has left thousands of innocent men, women and children dead; and has shattered the livelihood of millions of people facing the scourge of the longest, most brutal occupation in modern history. This week, we will tell their story, we will mourn their suffering, and we will honor their resistance. This week, we will stand with them.

Source: http://www.msu-uci.com/?p=179

US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights issues report on UCI's response to anti-Semitism

I will comment later once I have time to read through everything.

The 11-page report, as published by the OC Register

Full article: (Link)

Civil rights investigation clears UCI
Agency says lack of evidence in allegations by Jewish students.
by MARLA FISHER
The Orange County Register

IRVINE – A federal civil rights investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at UC Irvine found “insufficient evidence” that the university failed to respond appropriately to complaints by Jewish students, according to a reportreleased this afternoon.

Investigators with the department’s Office for Civil Rights visited the campus 11 times since 2006 to monitor demonstrations and interview students and staff. They failed to substantiate complaints that campus officials had ignored or downplayed anti-Semitic behavior, according to the Nov. 30 report released today.

UCI has earned a national reputation, spread largely by bloggers and pro-Zionist organizations, of being, in one organization’s words, “the most notoriously anti-Semitic campus” in America.

That appellation has been vehemently denied by campus officials, who say tensions between Jewish and Muslim students on their campus are about the same as at similar schools.

Earlier this year, the University of California released a report showing that 85 percent of UCI students said they believed there was respect for all students regardless of race or religion on campus. That is about the same percentage as other UC campuses around the state.

The Department of Education investigation was launched in 2004, after complaints filed on behalf of students by the Zionist Organization of America, a pro-Israeli organization with chapters in a dozen cities, including Los Angeles.

Some Jewish students complained about harassment, including reports of swastikas on campus and destruction of a Holocaust memorial display.

Muslim students have similarly complained about problems, including a fire that destroyed a mock depiction of the Palestine wall.

Jeffrey Rips, executive director of the Hillel Foundation of Orange County, which operates a Jewish student union at UCI, said he had not had a chance to review the report yet today, which is the last day of Hanukkah.

“I’m glad they finally came out with a report,” Rips said. “One way or another, it can give direction to the campus.”

The Los Angeles office of the Zionist Organization of America referred callers this afternoon to the East Coast office, which had closed for the day.

In its report, the civil rights office said that none of the 13 allegations could be substantiated. Some could not be acted upon because they were too old. The agency requires that complaints be filed within 180 days unless they show a pattern of discrimination.

According to the report, the agency found that several years-old complaints, including one of a rock thrown at a Jewish student and destruction of a Holocaust memorial in 2003, did not contribute to a hostile environment on campus because they “constitute isolated acts that were unrelated to the timely alleged acts.”

In other cases, investigators found that university officials acted appropriately, or that the complaint could not be conclusively identified as anti-Semitic.

For example, a swastika found in a bathroom in the Social Ecology building could not be considered anti-Semitic because it was accompanied by a vulgar phrase toward Asians.

In another reported incident, where a Jewish student’s flag of Israel displayed on the door of her dorm room was defaced with a swastika, the agency found that the university “responded promptly and effectively.”

“When OCR (Office of Civil Rights) investigated the timely allegations that suggested a possible hostile environment based on national origin, OCR found, in all instances, that the University took prompt and effective action to address the incidents,” according to the report.

While acknowledging that speeches, articles, marches, symbols and other events sponsored by the Muslim Student Union were “offensive to Jewish students,” they determined that they were not based on their national origin, but “rather based on opposition to the policies of Israel.”

In the case of inflammatory campus speakers, investigators found that most speakers “distinguished opposition to Zionism from opposition to Jews.”

The report also states there is “no evidence that the University implemented a systematic discriminatory policy.”

UCI Chancellor Michael Drake issued a statement saying that campus officials are “very gratified with the outcome and closure of this matter.”

“We are firmly committed to freedom of speech and open discourse, which are central to our missions of teaching, research and public service, and equally committed to maintaining a safe, non-threatening environment for all members of our campus community,” Drake said in his statement.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, who has been critical of UCI in the past, said he wasn’t surprised that many of the older complaints were not substantiated.

“This is a classic case of distant bureaucracy in action,” DeVore said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com

UCI MSU again violates UCI code #102.02 by furnishing false information

The UCI Campus Policies include the following:

102.00 GROUNDS FOR DISCIPLINE

Chancellors may impose discipline for the commission or attempted commission (including aiding or abetting in the commission or attempted commission) of the following types of violations by students, as well as such other violations as may be specified in campus regulations:

102.01 All forms of academic misconduct including but not limited to cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, or facilitating academic dishonesty.

102.02 Other forms of dishonesty including but not limited to fabricating information, furnishing false information, or reporting a false emergency to the University.

To summarize, if you spread false information, whether as part of your classwork, or even outside the classroom in the public sphere, UCI will punish you, and could expel you.

Keep that in the back of your head as you continue reading this post:

The MSU today posted to their website the following two flyers for their upcoming annual anti-Israel week - click either to open it to full size in another browser window:

Front:

(original is available here: http://www.msu-uci.com/static/azfront.jpg)

Back:

(original is available here: http://www.msu-uci.com/static/azback.jpg)

The back flyer has the following quotation, attribution, and citation:

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established 'normally' and happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a 'state' but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela - Former President of South Africa in a letter to a New York Times columnist March 30, 2001

Now I've covered the MSU's use of falsified quotations and citations as part of their literature and events in a previous post. So when I saw this, I wondered if they were once again using false scholarship, which as I've shown is grounds for discipline.

I dug around a bit and found the referenced letter. It includes the text of the quotation, and is a memo from Mandela to Thomas Friedman, a New York Times Columnist. Click here to see it on Media Monitors Network as well as on the memo author's own blog.

Yes, MEMO'S AUTHOR - namely, Arjan El Fassed of Electronic Intifada and other groups.

It's a hoax - and in the Fassed's own words, it was "a clearly labelled [sic] spoof". He elaborates in depth at this link on his blog as to the scandal surrounding this hoax memo.

Apparently, the moment Fassed published his hoax memo, it was picked up - minus the byline - by a bunch of people around the world just looking for anything that will make Israel look bad, and didn't care if it was inaccurate. To those people - and I lump the MSU leaders and membership within this group - Israel is to be loudly and publicly demonized by any means necessary. The truth be damned!

Fassed published his hoax memo in March 2001. A month later, Fassed felt the need to publish a clarification aptly titled "Spreading Like Wildfire" explaining to the world that the memo was made up.

That information is readily available on the internet via a quick search - I found all of the above links within five minutes of Googling the quotation's text and "mandela thomas friedman".

Yet the MSU felt the need to publish this quotation as true fact. If they had spent 5 minutes checking sources, we wouldn't be in this mess.

But instead of doing their required duty under UCI code #102.02 by making sure they do not furnish false information, at minimum the MSU's leadership and possibly their membership chose to clearly ignore the prohibition once again.

And remember, they've done this before - the MSU has a history of false scholarship.

In addition, I should bring up the MSU's motive:

The MSU's goal year after year has been and continues to be to incite hatred and violence against Jews on campus. The MSU and their membership say they are "anti-Zionist", but many leading figures from the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Vatican itself have stated that anti-Zionism is just another form of anti-Jewish hatred.

The MSU membership's hatred of Jews has appeared in their New University articles, letters, and opinion pieces.

You can read the support for violent Jew-haters and their organizations in their own magazine, Alkalima.

You can hear the calls to indiscriminate violence against Jews in their guest speakers' speeches.

And the MSU has planned more of this anti-Jewish hatred and calls to indiscriminate violence in this coming week's anti-Israel week.

This is not civil speech. This is hate speech, anti-Jewish hatred a.k.a. anti-Semitism, and moreover, this is outright intimidation.

No, it's worse than that - the MSU is attempting to dehumanize and debase Jews. Any real Holocaust scholar will tell you that dehumanization and debasement of a group is the first step towards genocide because it makes it easier to harm and kill the target group. After all, then the target group isn't human.

This is why a hostile environment against Jews has pervaded the campus for years, and why UCI has been under investigation by the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights for now two-and-a-half years.

These actions of intimidation by the MSU clearly violate the UCI Principles of Community, a document that not only every UCI student - MSU members included - agrees to follow when they enroll, but that every student organization's leadership - including the MSU - must acknowledge in an annually signed statement that "on behalf of my organization, I have received and read the Principles of Community."

In addition, given the definitions under UCI's Appendix M, I would find it hard to believe that these actions would not be classified as hate crimes and/or bias-related incidents.

I think the US Commission on Civil Rights would agree with these statements given its report a year ago on campus anti-Semitism as well as the information currently provided on their educational campaign website.

Hillel has even finally recognized that there is significant anti-Semitism on campus and has formed an task force to investigate the campus environment.

Students pay about $10,000 per year for the privilege to go to one of the top public universities in the US.

When students are thrust into a school environment where their kind is threatened with violence month after month with speeches that echo from the public campus squares through to the classrooms themselves, where people leave no doubt about their wish for someone to put a bullet not only in their head but those of their kind, it can and will do nothing but hurt those students' ability to study, which in turn hurts their GPA, which in turn reduces the ability to find the best job and salary levels, which in turn affects all kinds of things in those students' future lives.

The time has come for the UCI administration to revoke the MSU's registration with the Dean of Students once and for all and to not let them re-register for several years under any name.

The time has come for the UCI administration and the local authorities to investigate, prosecute, and throw out of school - and possibly in jail - the MSU's leadership, their active membership, and their guest speakers.

I await to see the UCI administration's response. This time, it had better be good and swift - and trust me, my standards, high as they may seem, are appropriate.

----

A copy of this is being sent to the US Commission on Civil Rights. If you or anyone you know experiences anti-Semitism at UCI or any US college campus, at minimum contact the USCCR immediately via one of the following methods:

Toll free phone: 1-800-552-6843
TDD/TTY: 1-800-877-8339
Email: referrals@usccr.gov


I would also recommend contacting Susan Tuchman, Director of the Center for Law and Justice at the Zionist Organization of America.

The US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights initiated its civil rights now two-and-a-half year long investigation of anti-Semitism at UCI only after Ms. Tuchman filed a complaint on the behalf of the Jewish students of UCI.

Ms. Tuchman wants to hear from you if you have experienced or someone you know has experienced anti-Semitism at UCI or any other US college campus. She continually updates the Office for Civil Rights as she hears about new incidents.

You may reach Ms. Tuchman by phone at: 1-212-481-1500
(Note this is in New York, so their hours are three hours ahead of ours)

"Richard Cohen gets something right"

Yet another way to spot anti-Semitism worded as anti-Zionism. See here for Natan Sharansky's 3-D's method.

Copied from Israel Matzav

My old friend Richard Cohen at the Washington Post is trying to figure out today why British journalists chose to boycott Israel of all countries. While he says a lot of things I don't like along the way, his bottom line as to why the journalists chose to boycott only Israel is spot-on:

The British journalists, like the academics before them, dare to tread where an army of goons has gone before. If they do not recognize the ember of anti-Semitism still glowing within them, they ought to park themselves before a mirror and ask why, of all the nations, they single out Israel for reprimand and obloquy. This business of assigning to Jews a special burden, for seeing in them more of mankind's bad qualities and less of its good, has a dark and ugly pedigree: the Chosen People, again -- and again in the wrong way.

Dershowitz: "Appropriate labeling" of "anti-Semites of Jewish heritage"

Jews for Ahmadinejad
Alan Dershowitz, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 24, 2006

The following is the first post of a new JPost.com blog featuring leading American attorney and stalwart defender of Israel Alan Dershowitz

By this time, everyone knows that Jews for Jesus are not really Jews. They are Christians using the cover of their Jewish origin to fool people into coming to their proselytizing services. But many people still think that the seven bearded enemies of Israel - members of an extreme cult called Neturei Karta - who accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come to Iran's Holocaust denial festival, are also real Jews.

Still others believe that supporters of Hizbullah and Holocaust minimizers like Norman Finkelstein - who uses his Jewish birth to cover for his anti-Semitism - are real Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I now propose a new vocabulary for describing these imposters. From now on, the Neturei Karta should be known as Jews for Ahmadinejad, and Norman Finkelstein and his ilk should be known now as Jews for Hizbullah.

The Neturei Karta describe themselves as part of the "Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism." In reality, they are a tiny sect that is unwilling to recognize Israel's right to exist as a secular state. According to the Neturei Karta, Jews may not reoccupy Jerusalem until the Messiah arrives and God explicitly allows the establishment of a Jewish nation grounded in halacha, or Jewish religious law.

The Neturei Karta are so incensed by a secular Israel that their principal mission is to align themselves with people and organizations such as Yasser Arafat, Hizbullah, and Ahmadinejad in order to do whatever they can to help eliminate Israel. They number no more than a few thousand people.

Noam Chomsky probably deserves a category all his own. In light of his having written an introduction to a book by Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson - who also spoke at the Iranian hate-fest - Chomsky should now be known as a Jew for Holocaust Deniers. Chomsky has claimed that he was only defending Faurisson's freedom of speech, but that defense rings hollow.

In the first place, Chomsky is not remotely a civil libertarian. Civil libertarians defend everyone's freedom of speech and conscience, whether they agree with the content of that speech or not. Chomsky, on the other hand, defends only those with whom he agrees.

Second, Chomsky did, in fact, defend the substance of Faurisson's Holocaust denial. He called Faurisson as "a sort of relatively apolitical liberal," praised his "extensive historical research," and characterized his assertions about the Holocaust as historical "findings." He also said that he did not see any "hint of anti-Semitic implications" in Faurisson's claim that the so-called Holocaust was a fraud perpetrated by the Jewish people.

Finkelstein's wholehearted hatred of Jews and support for Hizbullah is well documented and easily accessible. He is a denouncer of all Holocaust victims -calling survivors "frauds" and "hucksters" - while appropriating Nazi language himself when he characterizes American Jews as "parasites." He wears his vileness on his sleeve. For a quick overview of his positions, please see a chapter of my book The Case for Peace.

Just like consumers of food and tobacco products must be warned by labels, so too, consumers of propaganda should be warned by appropriate labeling. And just as a person can renounce his citizenship by deed or word, so too can a person renounce his ethnicity in the same manner. I hope my labeling of anti-Semites of Jewish heritage will put to rest any misconceptions that these fringe hate-mongers are representative of or speak for anyone but themselves.

Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard. His most recent book is Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways (Norton, 2006).

JPost book review: "Enemies of the state"

The Jerusalem Post just published a review of a book on anti-Zionist Haredi Jews. This paragraph especially stood out:

Worse is the attempt made by these circles to blame Zionism for the Holocaust. The author should be applauded for not hiding this, but he is content to cite their justifications without pointing out that their assertions are bad theology and worse history. To assume the Holocaust was divine punishment for Jewish wrongdoing is to remove the moral burden for mass murder from Hitler and his gang and to place it on the shoulders of the victims. To pretend to know just what Jews did wrong to bring the death camps into being is arrogant and presumptuous.

And this sentence from the conclusion is especially interesting:

The academic fad of presenting almost any view, no matter how outlandish, under the cloak of "discourse" and therefore exempt from critical analysis is a bad thing and should be discouraged.

By the way, for those of you scratching your heads as to what a "Haredi Jew" is: Wikipedia's take on Haredi Judaism, though take it with a grain of salt.

The whole article:

Enemies of the state
RALPH AMELAN, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 28, 2006

A Threat from Within
Yakov M. Rabkin
Zed Books
261 pages

In a recent review of a work surveying mainly left-wing Jewish opponents to Zionism, I noted that haredi opposition to the Jewish state had been entirely overlooked. "Where is Natorei Karta in all this?" I asked. No sooner was the review published than I received an e-mail from Yakov Rabkin, professor of the history of science at the University of Montreal, telling me that he had written a book that would enlighten me as to just where Natorei Karta was in all this.

It was an offer I could not refuse. I am glad I didn't, even though I have to report that I found the book as depressing, in its own way, as the earlier work.

At least Rabkin has good intentions. According to his own lights, he has tried to give voice to haredi groups who find it difficult to obtain a fair hearing in the media. He is anxious to get over the message that not all Jews are Zionists, and that traditional "Judaic" philosophy (the author's term) is profoundly opposed to Zionism.

This is perhaps not news to most of us here, but Rabkin does quote chapter and verse from various rabbis to demonstrate their unswerving opposition to Zionism, and illustrates the various grounds for their opposition, including a fear of messianism, a rejection of the secular, nationalist philosophies that won over many Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and a desire to keep a low profile and not provoke the gentiles.

He becomes interesting when he traces the Russian origins of the early Zionists and assesses the impact that the ideological currents of the period had on the Jews there. But otherwise he lets his unabashed sympathies for the "Judaic" viewpoint get the better of him, and he leaves almost unexamined areas that cry out for scholarly analysis.

For example, there is little attempt to show how the haredi opposition to Zionism increased as ultra-Orthodoxy itself became more extreme in the wake of the Enlightenment: The haredi claim to represent an unbroken, unchanging and accepted Judaism is taken at face value. Rabkin postulates the opposites of peaceful tradition and violent rebellion without delving beneath the surface.

This total identification of ultra-Orthodoxy with the mainstream of Jewish Orthodox thought blinds Rabkin to the extent to which Natorei Karta and its allies represent an extreme, radical approach to the State of Israel unjustified by any "Judaic" tradition. The language used by these people ought to have lit warning lights. Zionists are routinely abused with epithets that cast doubt on the mental balance of those uttering them: "Amalek" and "Satan" are just two of the choicer examples found here.

Worse is the attempt made by these circles to blame Zionism for the Holocaust. The author should be applauded for not hiding this, but he is content to cite their justifications without pointing out that their assertions are bad theology and worse history. To assume the Holocaust was divine punishment for Jewish wrongdoing is to remove the moral burden for mass murder from Hitler and his gang and to place it on the shoulders of the victims. To pretend to know just what Jews did wrong to bring the death camps into being is arrogant and presumptuous.

At least in this book Reform Jews are not blamed: Their historic opposition to Zionism saves the day.

Wild claims that Hitler was provoked to kill six million Jews because the Zionists called for an economic boycott of Nazi Germany are nonsense: Hitler's murderous anti-Semitism ruled his mind long before he ruled Germany .

And if God was provoked by Zionism, then why did the Yishuv emerge from World War II unscathed? The absurdity of haredi claims is relevant to any assessment of their state of mind and their likely appeal to a wider Jewish audience, but to Rabkin, their every statement testifies merely to their admirable adherence to tradition.

The tragedy of European Jewry is that the time-honored low-profile policy to avert total destruction that had stood it in good stead in the past, failed when faced with the Nazis. Hitler was a phenomenon that it had never known before. Many Zionists, just because they were more attuned to the spirit of the age, realized what would happen and were able to escape in time And what of those haredim who, one way or another, have come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel?

The author devotes a chapter to them under the all-too revealing title "Collaboration and Its Limits." Needless to add, the pejorative word "collaboration" is not carelessly chosen. Yet it is these haredim who are far more closely aligned with the traditional haredi approach to unfriendly governments. They are no Zionists themselves, of course. But they practice quiet diplomacy, generally keep on the right side of the authorities, and they certainly do not side with the enemies of the state in which they live.

"A Talmudic scholar, witnessing in a Jerusalem street a Natorei Karta demonstrator decrying the very existence of the State of Israel, accused him of being a Zionist: 'In Poland or in Russia would he thus curse the authorities? Would he act like this in America?'"

Rabkin cites this conversation without drawing the obvious conclusion that Natorei Karta has departed from mainstream haredi practice, and has become a wild, isolated sect calling down the wrath of heaven on all and sundry, and openly posing with terror organizations with Jewish blood on their hands.

The author's zeal to sever any connection in the mind of his (presumably) overseas audience between an idealized, peaceful, authentic Judaism and a rebellious, radical, secular nationalism is understandable, perhaps. But it cannot come at the expense of the truth. The academic fad of presenting almost any view, no matter how outlandish, under the cloak of "discourse" and therefore exempt from critical analysis is a bad thing and should be discouraged.

A Threat from Within is a useful sourcebook depicting this cramped world, lit by the lurid flames of cruel and misplaced passion. But it is no more than that.